The Longest Wayhttps://thelongestway.com
… from Beijing to Bad NenndorfTue, 26 Sep 2017 18:25:27 +0000en-UShourly1Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with WikioSubscribe with Daily RotationHey guys, this is the feed of The Longest Way. I write new stuff and post new pictures whenever I find the time, so please enjoy and don't forget to comment! :)a road of bottles, notes, and graveshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/10/road-bottles-notes-graves/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/10/road-bottles-notes-graves/#respondSun, 10 Sep 2017 06:29:34 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44599The hotel room in Turkmenabat was alright: If you like a hard bed. I asked my guide if I could strap a camera to my chest and film in the city, and after some deliberation we decided that maybe the small action cam on the side of the Caboose would be a better idea. So […]

I asked my guide if I could strap a camera to my chest and film in the city, and after some deliberation we decided that maybe the small action cam on the side of the Caboose would be a better idea.

So here’s today’s Let’s Walk video:

The road out of Turkmenabat was broad and straight:

Sometimes I would see an old bus:

Or a factory in the distance:

I didn’t see many women who wore headscarves, though some did:

It was still pretty hot during the day, so I didn’t envy them.

Sometimes I would see a train:

And one time there was a shop that sold inflatable balls that looked like watermelons, just like the one I had been playing with on the shores of Issyk-kul just a few weeks ago:

There were pink flowers:

And there was another river (or a canal):

One time this gentleman and his son stopped me to provide me with bread, water, and cola:

And then, at around noon, I passed it, the gate of Turkmenabat:

We set up an improvised lunch camp in the shade of a container in the desert. This is what I was looking at for the next three hours (though I slept through part of it):

And then the road was ours:

There were attempts to stop the desert from encroaching on the road, something I had seen in the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang a few years earlier:

And – for some strange, unexplained reason – there were a lot of plastic bottles stuck into the bushes upside down:

We figured that they were probably there to mark a certain spot. But why were there so many?

When I say “we”, I am usually talking about the Caboose and myself, but during this part of the trip, it often means us and my guide and my driver. They were always there, waiting for me in their car:

Sometimes, just like on the roads that ran through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, there were graves (or memorials) along the way:

I figured they were for traffic victims.

At other times there were written notes in the bushes:

I did not know what they meant, and I did not want to remove them to show them to my guide.

The road had been pretty good around Turkmenabat, but it gradually got worse as we were leaving the city:

At this point I popped in my earphones and blasted some old school Incubus. Why had they gone the way of the Red Hot Chili Peppers? It was a tragedy.

I saw a lot of trucks, mostly from Turkmenistan of course, but there were also Iranian trucks and trucks from Turkey. Not once did I see a vehicle from any of the other Central Asian countries.

Whoever lost his Iranian license plate probably dived straight into a bureaucratic hell at the border:

We were going to camp in the desert, so my guide and my driver set out about an hour before sunset and looked for a spot to set up camp. They built a fire and started cooking up a nice stew of vegetables we had bought at the bazaar in Turkmenabat:

It was a very good stew:

I set up my tent, then I sat down and looked up, and I saw the Milky Way in all its glory:

I had a hard time appreciating it, though, because I was tired as hell, and my legs hurt. Also, I had caught some pretty bad blisters. Sadly, not all of them were treatable. These were the ones that were:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/10/road-bottles-notes-graves/feed/038.8281021 63.3844833unreal Turkmenistanhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/09/unreal-turkmenistan/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/09/unreal-turkmenistan/#commentsSat, 09 Sep 2017 20:16:18 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44532As I’m writing this I begin to realize that all of the following blog posts will be very long, with lots and lots of pictures (and hopefully with some videos as well). I think this is because Turkmenistan was a special experience for me, after waiting for such a long time to get in. There […]

]]>As I’m writing this I begin to realize that all of the following blog posts will be very long, with lots and lots of pictures (and hopefully with some videos as well). I think this is because Turkmenistan was a special experience for me, after waiting for such a long time to get in. There will be dancing, and there will be tears.

But let’s start from the beginning, from the time I left Bukhara. It was very early in the morning, and I felt a bit intimidated by what was about to happen. Bukhara didn’t care. It was as calm and peaceful as ever:

I hopped in a cab and tried to sleep during the 100-minute ride to the border. But I couldn’t. When we got there, the Caboose was ready:

I said goodbye to everyone, and then I went in. I cannot show you anything from the border itself, as taking pictures is strictly prohibited there. I can tell you that it took several hours to get through, though. It was the most thorough border check I have ever experienced.

My guide picked me up on the Turkmen side and helped me deal with the border guards and customs officials there. And still it took forever.

But at some point I was through.

I… was… in… Turkmenistan!

Here’s what I saw:

I made a little video about it:

The Caboose seemed happy, too:

We weren’t alone, though, because the only way to get a Turkmen tourist visa is if you book an actual guided tour. So that’s what I did. It doesn’t come cheap, but it was important to me for some reason to walk through this country. So I booked a tour, which meant that a guide and a driver were to be with me basically 24 hours of the day.

They were in a car:

At first they tried following me at walking speed, but then they decided that it was probably better to drive a little bit ahead and wait for me there. Then drive a little bit further ahead and wait there. And so on.

So I was walking into this country called Turkmenistan.

I made a Let’s Walk video about it:

And then I saw my first Turkmen houses:

And a car with a house:

But people are more interesting than houses or cars, and I was very happy when I ran into this kid who was riding a donkey:

Not knowing anything about the place, I felt very shy about taking photographs, especially photographs of people. But then this lady came storming out of a cotton field and said: “Take a photo of me and my husband!”

And so I did:

It felt unreal. And yet too real.

I saw water:

And I saw fields:

I saw a car that someone was trying to protect from the sun just like I was protecting the Caboose, with a piece of white cloth:

And then I came to a road sign that said “Türkmenabat”:

Unreal. I had mumbled this name to myself for so long. Turk-men-a-bat. And here it was. As if it was real. As if I could just walk there!

There was a police checkpoint, but my guide had already taken care of everything, and the cops just waved me through and said “welcome”, and then I was on a bridge across the Amu-Darya:

This river used to be called Oxus in the ancient Greek world. You know, in Alexander’s times. Remember how excited I was to cross the Syr Darya many months ago? Well, imagine how this felt to me: here, under my feet, is the fucking Oxus, and I am crossing it on a bridge, walking!

Unreal.

The city started with some rather bland roads and houses:

I asked my guide if I could go into a shop by myself and buy some water, and he gave me a funny look and said: “of course you can!”

We had changed some of my dollars into Turkmen manat before, so into this shop I went:

And it looked just like any old shop in Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan or Tajikistan. A shop that sells a little bit of everything. I got some water and some juice.

When I got back on the road, a car stopped, the driver came running across the street towards me, and then he handed me a bottle of pepsi, shook my hand, returned to his car and drove off.

I stood there with my pepsi:

And just seconds later I had a nang-bread to have along with the pepsi:

This family had given it to me:

I said thank you, thank you, thank you! Then I found a sidewalk to walk on:

The sidewalk wasn’t ideal, because there were many steps and holes, but it felt safer than walking on the road, because traffic here was basically the same as in most of Central Asia – there just seemed to be a general propensity of reckless driving.

Then I crossed another massive bridge in the center of Turkmenabat:

These guys offered me help and insisted that we take a picture:

I walked past a little monument to the First President of Turkmenistan:

And then another monument to the fallen of World War II:

I saw a young mother with her child:

And I saw a café that served cappuccino:

It was almost dark when I reached the main boulevard with its representative buildings, its monuments, and squares:

I particularly liked what I figured to be the theater:

And then I reached the hotel:

Most food places in Turkmenistan apparently closed at nine in the evening, so we had to move fast, drop my stuff off in the room, and go right back outside to look for a place to eat.

We ended up in this rather chic restaurant that played lounge music and had witty remarks about coffee on the wall:

They offered burgers, pasta, chicken – the usual. We ordered three lavash wraps, and I got fries and lemonade with mine. The taste was alright, the waitress was beautiful (as were many women in this town), and the place seemed to be pretty well-frequented:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/09/unreal-turkmenistan/feed/339.0565987 63.5888176royally afraidhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/08/royally-afraid/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/08/royally-afraid/#commentsFri, 08 Sep 2017 14:44:30 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44516Remember how excited I was to find out that Tajikistan was apparently dominated not by Coca-Cola and not by Pepsi, but by Royal Crown Cola? I’m of course a Dr. Pepper guy, but I always appreciate the struggle of the underdog, so I was happy to see that RC is apparently launching a campaign into […]

]]>Remember how excited I was to find out that Tajikistan was apparently dominated not by Coca-Cola and not by Pepsi, but by Royal Crown Cola?

I’m of course a Dr. Pepper guy, but I always appreciate the struggle of the underdog, so I was happy to see that RC is apparently launching a campaign into Uzbekistan now:

Down with the Coke-drinking establishment, I say!

Oh, and then there’s the new 50.000 som bill, y’all:

You probably know by now that Uzbekistan is struggling with inflation – the money is worth less and less. This was new to me when I came into the country for the first time last December and was given a huge bag of 500 and 1000 som notes that were apparently only worth very little.

So when the government introduced new ten thousand som notes four months ago, I was very happy.

And today we got fifty thousand som! Hoorah! There’s a beautiful crane on the back, and I think the bill is worth about eight dollars:

Now imagine how many 500 som bills you would have to lug around if you wanted to buy a TV or a microwave oven…

Anyway, this moment of excitement was my best one today. The rest of the day I was biting my nails, because I felt nervous, I felt worried, I felt scared about what was ahead of me.

Bukhara was beautiful today:

I went to a shop and bought a bunch of canned corn and canned beans in tomato sauce:

Then I realized that I was running out of money, so I had a rather frugal dinner:

But it was hard to do anything but think of the Turkmen desert that lay ahead. I was going to leave the city at 6:30 in the morning, then enter Turkmenistan two hours later.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/08/royally-afraid/feed/2under mudhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/07/under-mud/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/07/under-mud/#respondThu, 07 Sep 2017 11:43:57 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44500The Caboose seemed to be in good shape, which meant that no repairs were necessary, which in turn meant that I had the day off. I decided to check out the 8th/9th century Samanid Mausoleum, one of the oldest monuments in Central Asia: It had allegedly survived the Mongol invasion because it had been buried […]

]]>The Caboose seemed to be in good shape, which meant that no repairs were necessary, which in turn meant that I had the day off. I decided to check out the 8th/9th century Samanid Mausoleum, one of the oldest monuments in Central Asia:

It had allegedly survived the Mongol invasion because it had been buried under mud during that time. It was hard to imagine where a flood that big was supposed to come from in an area as dry as this one, but I liked the story.

The building it self was rather simple compared to the grandeur of Timurid architecture:

But it was rich in ornaments:

Especially the ceiling:

Some of the ornaments looked like little suns, which could be hinting at a Zoroastrian legacy:

The mausoleum had once been part of a cemetery, but the Soviets had apparently bulldozed the graves and erected a large amusement park instead:

I found this a rather fitting image for Soviet rule: people were supposed to ride ferris wheels built in the dust of their dead:

Oh, and I saw a lot of military and fire trucks working in the park, which was apparently due to two reasons:

The summer had been excessively hot, with temperatures surpassing 55° Celsius. This had left many trees suffering, and the government was trying to reverse these effects.

Rumor had it that President Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan was coming to town, so everything was supposed to look neat and clean for him. This reminded me of what I had seen in Andijan two months earlier, so I thought it was very probable.

Then I took a walk in the back alleys of Bukhara, and I said good-bye to the city:

And Bukhara said good-bye back:

May her most beautiful buildings always be safe, and if only being buried under mud can make them safe, then let them be buried under mud.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/07/under-mud/feed/0riding the elephanthttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/06/riding-the-elephant/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/06/riding-the-elephant/#respondWed, 06 Sep 2017 05:36:54 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44483Had a great breakfast this morning: Then I got into a car that was going to take me to the border, to check on the Caboose. We didn’t go to the border right away though, because we first had to pick up some stuff from a garage: When we were done, the car looked like […]

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/06/riding-the-elephant/feed/0farewell to allhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/05/farewell-to-all/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/05/farewell-to-all/#commentsTue, 05 Sep 2017 18:45:14 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44475Sometimes it feels as if I’m traveling through all these places just to say good-bye to them. So I bid farewell to Tashkent today: I left it on a train in the evening. It was a good train, one of the new Afrosiob bullet trains that I had first been on several months ago. The […]

]]>Sometimes it feels as if I’m traveling through all these places just to say good-bye to them.

So I bid farewell to Tashkent today:

I left it on a train in the evening. It was a good train, one of the new Afrosiob bullet trains that I had first been on several months ago. The train station is about 20km from the city, so I had to take a cab there:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/05/farewell-to-all/feed/2the oldest door and the firehttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/04/oldest-door-fire/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/04/oldest-door-fire/#commentsMon, 04 Sep 2017 11:13:58 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44436I had an interview today with a charming local journalist called Olesya: We met for lunch, so I suggested we go to the place that made the best lagman in town. But of course this happened: It was closed. Of course it was closed. Abandoning the idea of having the best lagman in town, we […]

]]>I had an interview today with a charming local journalist called Olesya:

We met for lunch, so I suggested we go to the place that made the best lagman in town. But of course this happened:

It was closed.

Of course it was closed.

Abandoning the idea of having the best lagman in town, we went and had what was probably the second best. Then Olesya offered to show me some touristic sites that I had not seen before. We went to an Iraqi-sponsored mosque:

It was called Kukcha Mosque, and it was dedicated to Sheyh Zayniddin, who had come here from Iraq in the 13th century.

He had left behind an observatorium:

One of the gentlemen who seemed to be responsible for the place showed us around. The observatorium was a dome with a whole in the top:

And inside that dome, there was a hole in the ground:

And under the hole, another dome:

It was all very interesting:

Next to the observatorium, there was a mausoleum for Shey Zayniddin:

A nice place to be buried.

It was here that I first understood that traditional doors in Uzbekistan had a special mechanism:

I was told that the door I was looking at was in fact the oldest door in all of Tashkent:

I loved it, especially the doorknocker:

After this, we went to Ming Uruk, a Zoroastrian excavation in the city center:

The Zoroastrian religion had been dominant in this area before the advent of Islam. Fire was important in Zoroastrianism, and the dualism of good and evil.

This particular site had been a temple dedicated to fire:

It was hard to make sense of how it used to work:

But I liked the idea that people had been worshipping fire exactly where I now stood:

Since it became clear that I liked Zoroastrian sites a lot, we went to another temple ruin in the outskirts of town:

It was called Shoshtepa, and it was very close to the road I had taken out of town many months earlier, on the day that the Caboose died:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/04/oldest-door-fire/feed/3sizes of thingshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/03/sizes-of-things/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/03/sizes-of-things/#respondSun, 03 Sep 2017 10:30:31 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44425When I woke up, the train was still rumbling along: The kids had been quiet for most of the night, so that was good. The hostel I usually stayed at in Tashkent didn’t have any rooms, so I did what I had been wanting to do since I came to Tashkent for the first time […]

The hostel I usually stayed at in Tashkent didn’t have any rooms, so I did what I had been wanting to do since I came to Tashkent for the first time many months ago – I got a room in the big fat Hotel Uzbekistan:

It was located right on the square with the large Amir Timur statue, and I wanted to get a room with a view and snap some pictures.

Well, I got a room, but the view was a bit different:

Okay, whatever.

I needed to get another train ticket to Bukhara, so I went to the train station to look for one. Having dealt with huge crowds that seemed to always flock to the ticket counter from all sides, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/03/sizes-of-things/feed/0funny lookshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/02/funny-looks/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/02/funny-looks/#commentsSat, 02 Sep 2017 09:31:23 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44414Had a burger today: A bearded dude in a chic restaurant having a fancy burger. Hipster status achieved? Then I went to the train station: I was going to board the night train to Tashkent (the one that I had taken in the other direction two months earlier), but when I got there, a group […]

A bearded dude in a chic restaurant having a fancy burger. Hipster status achieved?

Then I went to the train station:

I was going to board the night train to Tashkent (the one that I had taken in the other direction two months earlier), but when I got there, a group of young men were giving me funny looks. What, I thought, did I do something wrong?

But no:

They had recognized me from the weird beard video and wanted a picture.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/02/funny-looks/feed/1some nerdy stuff about mapshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/09/01/nerdy-stuff-about-space/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/01/nerdy-stuff-about-space/#respondFri, 01 Sep 2017 13:28:42 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44401I went to a food court today: The above picture looks more fancy than it really is. The food is simple and cheap. This is what I got: Then I did something I had been wanting to do for a long time – I updated the Google Earth file: It’s strange to think that this […]

The above picture looks more fancy than it really is. The food is simple and cheap. This is what I got:

Then I did something I had been wanting to do for a long time – I updated the Google Earth file:

It’s strange to think that this is what it would look like from space.

Anyway, I updated everything. The file itself is very small, but it keeps itself up-to-date by downloading the data from my server. The GPS-tracks of the trek. The 18 main cities I want to walk through. All the smaller places that were somehow significant. The scenic spots (lakes, monuments, etc). And finally, the marks where I completed another thousand kilometers and did my little dance:

I like maps and all of this stuff. Maybe this is the reason why the file is so comprehensive and detailed:

If you click on something, a window with a photo, a short description, and a link to the corresponding blog post should show up:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/09/01/nerdy-stuff-about-space/feed/0popcorn and lollipopshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/31/popcorn-lollipops/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/31/popcorn-lollipops/#commentsThu, 31 Aug 2017 13:20:20 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44393Walked around town and tried to buy a train ticket to Tashkent today. It took a while until I found the right ticket bureau. I’d tell you which one it was, but I forgot. Ha! Anyway, Almaty was nice in late summer: Once I had my ticket I went to a large shopping mall and […]

]]>Walked around town and tried to buy a train ticket to Tashkent today. It took a while until I found the right ticket bureau. I’d tell you which one it was, but I forgot. Ha!

Anyway, Almaty was nice in late summer:

Once I had my ticket I went to a large shopping mall and bought new headphones, new flip-flops, and two little carabiner hooks.

There was a movie theater in the mall. When I walked past, I figured it might be a good idea to watch a movie so I could have some of that popcorn I was smelling. And then I got the most brilliant idea ever.

I could just buy popcorn at the movie theater and then leave!

So I did that:

And I walked around town:

Eating my popcorn:

Until it was all gone:

I was feeling pretty sick at this point, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my idea maybe hadn’t been that brilliant.

But everything turned out well in the end, because of a hooligan. Remember the little kid who was so scared of me the last time I was here?

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/31/popcorn-lollipops/feed/1fear smothered in cakehttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/30/fear-smothered-cake/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/30/fear-smothered-cake/#commentsWed, 30 Aug 2017 12:47:34 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44388I wasn’t going to fly to Tashkent if I could avoid it. You might remember how I suddenly came to the realization that flying was bad for the environment a while ago. But I hated buses. So I decided to go to Almaty and take a train to Tashkent from there. Only first I went […]

]]>I wasn’t going to fly to Tashkent if I could avoid it. You might remember how I suddenly came to the realization that flying was bad for the environment a while ago.

But I hated buses. So I decided to go to Almaty and take a train to Tashkent from there. Only first I went and mailed my SD-cards and my notebook home:

Then I got in a car to the border at Kordai. It was the same as usual. Actually, it felt pretty much just like the time I had crossed it on foot with the Caboose almost one year ago. Kordai was a charming mess:

It takes four hours to go from Bishkek to Almaty. If there is a traffic jam in either city (and they are increasingly frequent), then it takes longer. That’s a long time to get carsick and think about what’s ahead.

I was starting to get worried about Turkmenistan. 550km in 15 days, was that even possible for me? Or maybe it was less than 550km? I had heard conflicting reports. Anyway, I was worried, so once I got to Almaty I treated myself to a good dinner and a piece of cheesecake:

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/30/fear-smothered-cake/feed/3independence dayhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/29/independence-day/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/29/independence-day/#commentsTue, 29 Aug 2017 06:35:27 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44375One of the most important things for me while I’m on the road is making sure my footage is secure. I try to do this by saving all of it on these 512GB SD-cards that I send home once they’re full: This is what I did today. Oh, and the friendly people at the dental […]

]]>One of the most important things for me while I’m on the road is making sure my footage is secure.

I try to do this by saving all of it on these 512GB SD-cards that I send home once they’re full:

This is what I did today.

Oh, and the friendly people at the dental clinic fixed my tooth. Should be okay now. YAY!

While I was walking through town I noticed some festivities that were apparently taking place in a central square:

Lots of dancers:

It turned out to be the preparations for Kyrgyzstan’s Independence Day on August 31st:

When I talked to people, however, it seemed as though they were more excited by the national elections that were coming up in October. Word had it that they were going to vote their President out of office.

Kyrgyzstan, the only real (albeit flawed) democracy in Central Asia. What a brave country!

Here’s a thought, though: the liberal-democratic world is always pushing for authoritarian countries to transform themselves into liberal democracies. And this is of course justified. But what I don’t understand is why we don’t sacrifice some of our partnerships with authoritarian regimes and give them to democratic governments instead.

What if Kyrgyzstan was the richest place in Central Asia because of all the partnerships with the “Western World” – wouldn’t other countries try to emulate that?

But no. All too often we ignore the countries that are brave enough to try democracy, and instead we do business with authoritarians while telling other authoritarians to become democracies.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/29/independence-day/feed/1the fillinghttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/28/the-filling/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/28/the-filling/#commentsMon, 28 Aug 2017 06:22:28 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44371I don’t even know if it’s called a “filling” or whatever. But something had been installed in one of my teeth a while ago by my dentist. And that something fell out last night when I was flossing. Fuggidifuck, I thought. So I picked up my Iranian visa, and then I went to the First […]

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/28/the-filling/feed/1misogynist beats racisthttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/27/misogynist-beats-racist/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/27/misogynist-beats-racist/#respondSun, 27 Aug 2017 05:45:13 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44364When I went and had breakfast this morning, I was surprised to see that the Mayweather-McGregor fight was on. Wasn’t it supposed to be a PPV thing? Well, here it was apparently on regular-ass tv. A couple of dudes were watching the fight: Later, some more dudes appeared, and we all found out that the […]

]]>When I went and had breakfast this morning, I was surprised to see that the Mayweather-McGregor fight was on. Wasn’t it supposed to be a PPV thing? Well, here it was apparently on regular-ass tv.

A couple of dudes were watching the fight:

Later, some more dudes appeared, and we all found out that the fight was just as boring as could be expected. At some point the dudes started laughing at McGregor. Then it was over. The guy who beat women had vanquished the guy who liked to flirt with racism.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/27/misogynist-beats-racist/feed/0the v needs pickleshttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/26/v-needs-pickles/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/26/v-needs-pickles/#respondSat, 26 Aug 2017 05:12:07 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44358It was the weekend, so I decided to take it easy and walk around town for a while. Bishkek, like many other places, seemed to look best in late summer, when it could show off its parks: It reminded me a lot of that time I had been here three years earlier, in the summer […]

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/26/v-needs-pickles/feed/0Gotdoghttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/25/gotdog/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/25/gotdog/#respondFri, 25 Aug 2017 14:34:09 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44347I went on my second visa run today. With both Uzbek and Turkmen visas in my passport, all I had to do was get an Iranian one, and I would be good to go. So I took a cab downtown, and then I started walking around: The Iranian Embassy had me go to some bank […]

]]>I went on my second visa run today. With both Uzbek and Turkmen visas in my passport, all I had to do was get an Iranian one, and I would be good to go.

So I took a cab downtown, and then I started walking around:

The Iranian Embassy had me go to some bank and pay something (only this time I had to go not to some local bank but to the Bank of Pakistan). And then they told me to come back on Monday to pick up my visa.

Okay.

So after this, I walked around some more. I passed the Aitmatov monument:

And I thought that people should really put up more monuments of artists, and less monuments of their military leaders.

Then I had a hotdog:

There is something strange about the Russian language. It has no “h”, but it has a sound that comes pretty close, which it writes with the Cyrillic letter “х”. But when it transliterates words from foreign languages like Hamburg or Hitler, it doesn’t use that letter. Instead, it uses “г”, which corresponds to “g”. So Hamburg turns into Gamburg (Гамбург), and when they say Gitler kaput (Гитлер капут), they’re talking about a 2008 movie that’s making fun of Hitler.

So far so good. But what’s weird is that the word “hotdog” is commonly being transliterated as hot-dog (хот-дог), which sounds pretty close to the original.

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https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/24/visa-bozo/#commentsThu, 24 Aug 2017 10:27:44 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44341I wanted to get my Turkmen visa as soon as possible. So I got up early and flagged down a cab. Urmat, the driver, was a friendly guy who spoke good English. He took me to the Turkmen Embassy, but we arrived there an hour early (they opened at 10am). So we figured we might […]

]]>I wanted to get my Turkmen visa as soon as possible. So I got up early and flagged down a cab. Urmat, the driver, was a friendly guy who spoke good English. He took me to the Turkmen Embassy, but we arrived there an hour early (they opened at 10am).

So we figured we might as well try the Uzbek Embassy before. But alas! They, too, only started working at 10am.

In the end, Urmat was my driver all day, from eight thirty in the morning until seven in the evening. This was because the whole process was a bit complicated. We had to go to both embassies multiple times, and we also had to go to different banks to make payments for the visa.

In between we stopped at his place, though, so I could have some soup and meet his family:

It was great:

And at five thirty in the afternoon, it happened: I finally had my Turkmen visa.

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https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/23/out-the-door/#commentsWed, 23 Aug 2017 10:16:13 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44336So I packed all my stuff together: Well, not all of it. I left some things in the room: a large towel, an inflatable mattress, a candle, a box of wash powder, a box of matches, the melon ball, a plastic cup, a 5-liter container of water. And then I was out the door: Into […]

Well, not all of it. I left some things in the room: a large towel, an inflatable mattress, a candle, a box of wash powder, a box of matches, the melon ball, a plastic cup, a 5-liter container of water.

]]>https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/23/out-the-door/feed/1Bye Issyk-Kulhttps://thelongestway.com/2017/08/22/bye-issyk-kul/
https://thelongestway.com/2017/08/22/bye-issyk-kul/#respondTue, 22 Aug 2017 10:02:09 +0000https://thelongestway.com/?p=44328What a hangover… I was hardly able to move until late in the afternoon. Then I went out to say good-bye to the lake. I knew I was going to miss this place: I decided that eating was a good remedy against a hangover. So I went to the usual place and ordered the usual: […]